But he was far from the first person to hurt me—and he definitely didn’t dole out the biggest wounds.
In fact, Hiller’s violation was almost child’s play when it comes to the rest of my life.
Especially my younger years.
“Who else left you, Red?” he asks, snapping me out of my swirling thoughts.
I open my mouth to lie, but then he lifts a hand, and I can’t help it, I flinch away from the contact.
He sees that flinch—how could he not when it’s right in front of him?—and moves even more slowly. But he doesn’t stop. He keeps going, oh so slowly, until he’s brushing the backs of his knuckles over my cheek. “Who else hurt you?”
Everything seizes in me again.
And so quickly, so fiercely that tears clog up in my throat and my eyes burn, the past swells up and?—
No.
I’m not crying again.
Not over this shit.
I lift my chin, step away from his touch, and blatantly lie, “No one.”
He tilts his head to the side and I brace, resist the urge to retreat.
I have to hold my ground. I have to steel myself in concrete and barbed wire and prepare for the impact of whatever bomb this man is going to drop on me.
Because it’s all I know.
“No one hurt you,” he says softly.
“Exactly.” I drop the spoon back into the rice then reach for my bowl, my plate. “No one.” Then I take advantage of his quiet to say, “Well, since you’re here, we should talk about the team?—”
“Nope.”
I blink, surprise sliding through me.
Because if there’s anything that Damon and I are comfortable with, it’s talking about the team.
It’s the safe spot.
It’s where I’m most secure. Where the carefully constructed distance around him stays intact.
It’s—
“No,” he says as he starts loading up his plate, “we’re not going to talk about the team.”
“Um…” I blink again. “We’re not?”
“Nope,” he repeats, snagging my plate from my hand and moving over to the island, parking his ass on a stool, and setting my plate down at the spot next to him. “We’re going to eat, and we’re going to talk, and you’re just going to deal, Red.”
TEN
Damon
I watchthe muscle flickering in her cheek for a long moment before she grabs her utensils, her bowl of wonton soup that’s mostly wontons, and then stomps over to me.
“What?” she snaps. “We can’t multitask—eat and talk about the team at the same time?”
